


Late Bloomer

by RembrandtsWife



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alpha John, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, M/M, Omega Sherlock, Omega Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-17 11:41:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/867134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/RembrandtsWife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holmes men tended to bloom late. Sherlock, however, is an unfruitful vine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Late Bloomer

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Late Bloomer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/891801) by [ogawaryoko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ogawaryoko/pseuds/ogawaryoko)



> Thanks to Professorfangirl for asking me about Omegaverse, and to Juniper Rain for having a look at this and encouraging me to post it. Not your typical Omegaverse story! Proceed at your own risk.

The first time Sherlock Holmes came into heat, he was nearly eighteen. He had been only six when his father sat him down, told him Mummy had been carrying a baby sister for him and My but had got sick and lost it, and explained about alphas and omegas, boys and girls, sex and babies. Sherlock had found it very interesting for about six weeks, then drifted off into a study of megalithic architecture.

When he was thirteen, his father had already been dead for five years. It was Mycroft who sat him down this time, talked about puberty and presentation, alphas, omegas, and betas, and told him not to worry, Holmes men tended to bloom late. Sherlock soon shot up in height, sprouted hair in places he did not want it but not in places where he did want it, and (after a very embarrassing phase involving frequent squeaking) developed a pleasingly deep voice that caused any number of admirers to assure him he must be an alpha. He didn't see why the timbre of his voice should matter. Even after he began having regular nocturnal emissions, which he thought were probably an indication that he was, indeed, an alpha, he did not feel particularly interested in sex during waking hours. His peers all seemed dreadfully interested in having sex with one another; he did not, but since he seemed to be maturing in a normal way, he did not, in fact, worry. "Sexless" was just one more insult hurled by his grotty schoolfellows, and they remained less intelligent than he was no matter who their fathers were or how hard they hit.

Then his eighteenth birthday was looming and Sherlock was wondering if he'd get any of the gifts he'd requested, particularly that Arabic manuscript on early chemistry that he hadn't got for Christmas. He was not at all wondering whether he'd meet a nice girl at uni or perhaps an omega boy who took his fancy, or whether he would come into heat any time soon. It was the day after New Year's, and he was setting up an experiment involving combustion rates of different kinds of tobacco when the first symptoms arrived.

He felt a sudden wave of nausea accompanied by a fierce cramping of his bowels. The combined sensations sent him fleeing from his lab to the loo, where he waited to void whatever was upsetting him by whichever method his body chose. Nothing happened except that the sensations subsided, so he took a quick, rather cool shower and resumed his research.

In another thirty minutes, the nape of his neck and his forehead had become wet with perspiration. Distracted, he stripped off his dressing gown and shirt, wound a towel soaked in cool water around his neck, and carried on dressed only in his pyjama trousers.

His temperature rose, and with it came a flow of perspiration involving not merely his face and neck, but his armpits, groin, and lower back. A bath in water that was nearly cold did nothing to help him; the heat gathered in his lower abdomen and in his groin; he developed an erection combined with a strong reluctance to touch it.

Not until the first shocking cramp in his lower back and the discovery of the slippery mucus between his buttocks did Sherlock break down and seek help. Mycroft was still home between terms, and Sherlock cornered him in their father's study, which had effectively become Mycroft's.

His older brother sat behind the wide antique desk with his hands steepled before him as Sherlock babbled out the progressive symptoms of the last two hours. When he finished, thrusting his shoulders back and twisting his hands together at the base of his spine, Mycroft leaned forward and turned off the green-shaded desk lamp with a single decisive click.

"Sherlock," he said, not quite looking at his brother, "you are in oestrus. You are an omega, and you are having your first heat."

And that was how Sherlock learned he was an omega.

He remembered little of that first heat, and not only because it was among the first incidents he deleted once he mastered that art. He was gravely, indeed deliriously ill for most of the oestrus. He did not remember how his mother packed and left for Scotland, afraid lest his delicate condition disturb her always more delicate state. He did not remember the splitting headaches that accompanied the muscle cramps, the compulsive but ineffectual masturbation that followed his initial reluctance, the bouts of weeping alternating with bouts of rage. He did, unfortunately, remember the bars on the windows and the bolted door of the room where he was confined, and the bruises on his hands and arms from trying to break out.

He allowed himself to remember some of the interminable, exhausting, and humiliating medical consultations which took up most of the next two years. He remembered and carefully stored in his mind palace the particulars of his diagnosis and the eventual drug regimen he was prescribed: Acute oestral dysfunction with bipolar display. In layman's terms, Sherlock's heats made him psychotic, a danger to himself and others. The drugs made him sane again; they also made him infertile.

With his condition, Sherlock was unlikely to conceive at any rate, or to carry the child safely to term. The drugs ensured he would not conceive because they ensured he would not enter oestrus. They also limited his production of pheromones and dulled his response to the pheromones of others. Unless he went off the drugs, he would essentially live as an infertile beta, capable of having non-procreative sex if he wished, capable of refraining indefinitely without detriment.

By the time the doctors came up with a drug cocktail that satisfied the requirements, Sherlock had been through three more heats. He was quite content, thereafter, to say, "Never again". With some narcotic assistance, an oestrus felt more like a mild flu than like a psychotic episode, but he found no joy in the experience. When, very grudgingly, on his doctors' advice, he had accepted the services of a sexual therapist to help him through a heat, he attacked the alpha at the very moment when he should have yielded, leaving the man with a broken wrist and a good many bruises.

By the time he was twenty-one, Sherlock had accepted that there would be no more heats for him and likely no sex at all. He had experimented, cautiously, with female alpha therapists and with both male and female acquaintances. Women, it seemed, were right out; no matter their presentation, no matter how attractive they found him before sex, they seemed to find something off about him once the pheromones were peaking, even the therapists. Other omega males repulsed him, and the feeling was usually mutual. Alpha males, it seemed, weren't interested in a partner who wanted to be treated like a beta and not a broodmare. He had some success with beta males, at least in mutual sexual satisfaction, but most people remained infuriatingly dull no matter how agreeably they performed sexual acts. With his hormones damped down to beta levels or lower thanks to the drug regimen, it was just as easy and just as effective for Sherlock to relieve his own sexual tensions without recourse to a partner, and so he did.

Until he met John Watson.

Only in romance novels and epic historical paintings were male alphas invariably tall and muscular brutes with steely glances, granite jaws, and visible clouds of pheromones haloing their heads. Sherlock recognized at once--no pheromones necessary--that this small, trim man with the tired, wary eyes and the unnecessary cane was an alpha. A military alpha, at that, trained to dominance in high-stress situations.

By the time he shrugged off his shock blanket and walked off into the night with the man who had just killed for him, he knew that John Watson was one of the strongest alphas he'd ever met. Utterly unfazed by Sherlock's posturing, genuinely impressed by his intelligence, and--as he soon demonstrated in their common daily life--entirely willing to give Sherlock hell when he thought it necessary, he did so without ever belittling Sherlock or saying anything whatsoever about omegas. As a bonus, he'd been unintimidated by Mycroft, even though he assumed he was some sort of criminal mastermind instead of merely an interfering older brother.

For the first time in a very, very long time, Sherlock allowed himself to want. It wasn't so much that he wanted to have sex with John, although he calculated that it would be pleasurable to do so. It was simply that he wanted to be acknowledged by John. He wanted to know whether John thought of him, of their partnership, in the same terms that Sherlock did: John Watson is Sherlock Holmes's alpha. Sherlock Holmes is John Watson's omega.

#####

John Watson had always known he was an Alpha.

He knew it the first time he heard a teacher explain about alphas, omegas, and betas, and how alphas were supposed to take care of people. He knew it when grown-ups patted him on the head and cooed over his chubby cheeks. He knew it when he raised his small fists to bigger bullies and they laughed. He knew it when his sister Harry, five years older, came into heat for the first time, and he locked himself in his room one day so he wouldn't go near her.

When puberty hit, it turned out he was right. He had his first wet dream when he was only eleven, and the hormones came rushing in. While his agemates shot up like weeds, turning into gawky saplings who reeked of pheromones, John's voice changed along with his scent, his shoulders broadened, and his penis developed an alpha's characteristic knot. Hours on the rugby pitch turned most of his baby fat into muscle, and he learned to use his remaining chubbiness to his advantage, to hide his strength until it was needed. Bullies stopped laughing once he landed the first punch. The army recruiters snapped him up at once: He was strong, fast for his height, agile, and a born commander, someone who could both accept and give orders with grace.

He had sex for the first time with a beta girl. He was thirteen and she was fifteen. She'd done it before but not with an alpha. She taught him the beginnings of what to do with his hands and his mouth and how to pay attention to a partner, but she didn't like the feel of the knot. John came inside her, and it was better than wanking, but he missed that feeling of sinking in there and staying, even though he'd never had it before.

He tried a few other beta girls before he met his first omega, in the army. Some of the betas would let him knot them and some wouldn't, but Gerry, the omega, wanted it, loved it, moaned softly the whole time. It was absolutely blissful for John, and while he thought he liked women better, if he had to stick to omega males in order to knot, he might just do it.

He remained short and a bit chubby and deceptively non-threatening in appearance, and he was a successful soldier, a skilled doctor, and tremendously successful at snagging sexual partners. Despite his unprepossessing looks, he had an unmistakably alpha scent, and he was charming out of bed and considerate in it. But when a bullet to the shoulder sent him home for good, he sat alone in a drab bed-sit, unwilling to intrude on his omega sister and her alpha partner, and with nowhere else to turn. A chance encounter with a medical school chum set him up as the flatmate of the oddest, most intelligent, and possibly most attractive man he'd ever met, a tall long-legged bloke named Sherlock Holmes.

Who, if he wasn't totally off the mark, was an omega. But a strange one.

Sherlock was fond of telling John that he could see but not observe. John spent a lot of time quietly observing Sherlock without telling what he was seeing. He found Sherlock extremely attractive, his intelligence just as attractive as his face, and he really had an incredible face, too. Sometimes, especially in the rare moment of quiet, the man looked almost feminine, even effete, but at other times, especially when he was running his mouth and barking orders at everyone, as entirely masculine. A lot of folks foolishly assumed that his pushy mannerisms were typical alpha swagger, but John knew better. There was something odd going on with Holmes. You couldn't miss it, living cheek by jowl with him. He rarely had to shave. He didn't date or see a sex therapist. Up close, even after running the streets of London or crashing in bed for a day without washing, he smelled kind of blank, not like the sweetness of a prepubescent child, but with the chemical flatness of someone on some kind of suppressants. And judging by the glimpses John got of his body, wrapped in his favorite silk dressing gown or draped in nothing but a sheet, he lacked the typical alpha knot. Was he an indifferent beta, then? Or was he, as John suspected, an omega with some sort of physiological problem?

###

Sherlock did not, of course, try to gain that acknowledgment openly. It went without saying that to do so would be the surest way to forfeit it. He merely went on as he had begun, allowing himself to want, allowing himself to notice and then to remember every detail of his flatmate, his friend, his alpha. The way John's hair and eyes took on different hues in different lights. The way he looked stripped of his bland comforting jumpers, in only a plain white undershirt above the waist--the deep tan remaining on his throat and hands, his pale smooth strong biceps, and the deep fuschia scar of his bullet wound, like the caldera of a minute volcano, concealed yet not hidden by the thin white fabric. The way he hummed under his breath without ever quite achieving a tune. The way he smelled after he'd had sex--and even to Sherlock's chemically dulled senses, the smell of sex on John Watson was noticeable and stimulating.

Stimulating, but he did not go into oestrus. His sexual desires remained reasonably satisfied by masturbation. John was his friend, and friendship proved to be a treasure of greater worth than Sherlock had ever estimated. Nothing needed to change, no matter how many times Sherlock had to relieve himself when John came home smelling of sexual congress.

Of course, given that entropy exists, matters did change, through no action of Sherlock's or of John's. It was Molly Hooper who precipitated the crisis; Sherlock thought, afterward, that he ought to have predicted that she would do, if not when.

Sherlock had wanted to examine a corpse before the forensic specialist got hold of it for the official autopsy. It was no challenge at all to bribe the right person with the right item in order to put the deceased on Molly's table, and as usual she did not deny him the favor of access, whatever protocol might say. It was not Sherlock's fault that she was motivated by her unrequited infatuation for him and that she made the mistake of wearing, in John's presence, a pheromone-enhancing fragrance that made John, the only alpha in the room, wince and cough and excuse himself.

After returning to 221B, however, it wasn't Molly's crude beguilements that John criticized.

"Why are you so horrid to that girl, Sherlock? She does you a lot of frankly dodgy favors just because she fancies you."

Sherlock sipped the tea that John had made and clucked his tongue, approving and disapproving at once. John had finally learnt to make the tea strong enough for Sherlock's liking. "That girl, as you refer to her, is an adult and a professional--moreover, a professional who deals with dead bodies on a daily basis. I see no reason why I should perpetuate her delusion of winning my romantic or sexual interest."

"Not really your area," John murmured. He sipped his tea, then tipped in more milk. "It smelt to me like she took you for an alpha."

Sherlock frowned. John gave him a bland look in return. John had never mentioned Sherlock's presentation before.

"You must know that I am not an alpha." He hoped John could not hear the minute tremor in his voice.

John nodded, settling into his favorite armchair. "Of course I do. But I don't know why Molly should think you are." His voice gentled, his concern now focused on Sherlock, not on Molly. "Something wrong? I'd like to help, if I can."

"You can't." The words shot out, misfired, before Sherlock could craft them, aim them, withhold them. "No one can."

John raised an eyebrow over his mug. "I *am* a doctor, you know--"

"You don't think I've had doctors? You don't think they've tried to *fix* me?" Sherlock bit his lip, shocked at himself. Nothing more of this sort must escape. He had learned long ago that shame is a yoke only one soul can bear.

"Sherlock." John's voice was deep and soft now, a tone for murmuring in a lover's ear in the dark, a caress like the vibration of the violin in the bones of the player. It touched Sherlock's longing for acknowledgment, and yes, for more than acknowledgment, and like a knowing hand it stroked that longing into quivering, pleading wakefulness.

"I'm a freak," Sherlock said. His lip ached as the blood flowed back into it; soon, everything else would ache, too. "Only not in the way Donovan thinks. But even a beta female with no discretion in her choice of partners can smell something... wrong about me."

The whole sordid story tumbled out, as briefly and clinically as Sherlock could tell it. John listened, his mug cradled between his hands, elbows on knees, listened and absorbed the shame, the disgrace, the frustration, all the emotions Sherlock wanted to keep out of his words yet couldn't. John was always able to listen like that. Perhaps someday he could teach Sherlock how to do it.

"In less 'enlightened' times I would have been confined to an asylum. They would have chained me up in a breeding pen during my heats and sold my favors by the hour to pay for my upkeep." Sherlock sneered. "No doubt Donovan and her ilk would think that's still the proper way to deal with me. But instead, I had two years of--doctors." He tried to keep the loathing out of his voice. "I only have to be very, very scrupulous about my drug regimen--which of course I am--and make a show of confidence. Molly's not the only person to be fooled by my presentation. Most people I meet ignore what their senses are telling them and think I'm an alpha."

"But you're not." John's voice was soft but focused. "I never thought you were. You're an omega."

Sherlock turned away, facing the back of the couch. "I'm a defective omega, a psychotic who can't breed, can't do the one thing I'm good for."

"Don't be ridiculous." The scorn in John's voice struck Sherlock between the shoulder blades. "Breeding's not all anyone's good for. I say that about women and I say it about omega men, too. Personally I'm grateful for contraception--I can have sex with anyone I want, any time we want. And it's not like an omega has to have a heat in order to have sex, or enjoy sex. The old wives' tales make a big deal of it, but I've shown plenty of omegas a good time when they weren't on heat."

The casual confidence in those words sent a shudder down Sherlock's spine which he tried hard to suppress. After a moment, he turned over again, looked carefully at the other man. "Don't you want children?"

John shrugged. "Maybe. Don't know. It depends a lot on the other person, on who I'd be having them with. I suppose if it had been a priority, I'd have had some by now, wouldn't I?" He sipped his tea and made an it's-cold face. "Really, Sherlock, life isn't like romance novels. Not all alphas are running around with their knot sticking out, just waiting to breed lots of babies on a helpless little omega who has nothing better to do."

Affront warred with amusement, and then Sherlock couldn't suppress his grin entirely. "No. I suppose not. But--" He didn't know quite what he was going to say next, which was something that happened so rarely he found himself opening and closing his mouth like a fish, and then he closed his mouth and looked at John.

John was smiling, a minute lift of the corners of his mouth, a minute crinkle at the corners of his eyes. "What do you want, Sherlock?" He was always most alpha, somehow, when he spoke softly, gently, his eyes crinkled as he looked at Sherlock.

Sherlock swallowed. "I want to know if you could possibly--" The words caught in his throat. Impossible. Never beg. Never ask.

"Want you?" John said. He put down his mug. "Oh yes. Have sex with you, even though you can't go into heat? Oh, definitely." He started to say something else, looked down, to the left, back to Sherlock, tongue flicking the center of his upper lip. Thinking better of it. "Fuck you right now? Yes, yes to that, too."

Sherlock sat up all the way, and that quick John was kneeling between his feet, fingers sliding into Sherlock's hair. This close his scent was strong, distinctive, appealing, not just alpha but John. The scent was all over him, hair hands shirt skin, and the taste of it was in John's mouth as it opened against Sherlock's, inviting him in.

John hummed softly in approval as Sherlock's tongue explored his mouth and his hands explored Sherlock's hair. Sherlock heard himself groan and broke the kiss, confused. John's thumb slipped down across his cheekbone, John's nose brushed his.

"All right, Sherlock?"

"Yes, no, I--" He gripped John's shoulders, looked in his eyes. "Just--just do--"

John understood, and John took charge. He pushed Sherlock back into the sofa, gently, and settled on his lap before initiating another kiss. His hands kept caressing Sherlock's hair, and his tongue explored Sherlock's mouth as thoroughly as Sherlock had explored John's, and far more skillfully. It didn't take long for Sherlock's hands to settle at John's hips, out of the way of whatever John wanted to do, while his busy mind registered all the signs of arousal in both himself and his partner: dilated pupils, increased respiration, rising body temperature, and erection.

Oh, yes--John was erect, palpable against Sherlock's belly, and Sherlock was, too, practically quivering inside his pyjama bottoms, harder than he'd been in over a decade. John rocked against him, slowly, never stopped kissing him. John's mouth moved slowly, tasting, feeling, tasting some more, his hands moving in counterpoint around Sherlock's face and head, callused fingertips and broad palms. He didn't seem to be in any hurry to move on, or move away, only lifting his head to speak when Sherlock began pushing his hips up, seeking friction against John's arse.

"Bedroom, then?" he asked, and pressed a kiss to Sherlock's cheek. The sensation of that kiss, just below the cheekbone, wet from their joined mouths, made Sherlock's spine ripple and his chest open up as if he had wings to spread.

It seemed somehow perfectly natural to follow John from the couch, their fingertips touching, into his bedroom, his own bedroom, which had the larger bed. It seemed natural that John should close the door behind them, even though they were alone in the flat, and then turn to pull Sherlock against him, fists curling into Sherlock's robe and shirt, tongue curling around Sherlock's, and Sherlock draped himself down over John, his alpha, letting his palms come to rest against the door above John's head as John's greedy hands cupped his face and his arse and held him up.

When Sherlock pulled away, trying not to gasp for breath after the most thorough kissing of his life, John began stripping off, his eyes never leaving Sherlock's. Oh, he'd been longing for this without knowing it--to see his alpha completely bare, uncovered just for him and not because of a bruise, a sprain, a burn, a moment between shower and wardrobe. John naked was just as he'd deduced, better than he'd expected, with little body hair save in armpit and crotch, soft belly but trim arms and legs, the deep magenta of the bullet wound over his collar bone and the different rose-red of his swollen cock lifting toward Sherlock.

If he weren't a pathetic excuse for an omega, the room would be filled by now with the scent of his pheromones. As it was, he could barely smell his own arousal, let alone John's, but that didn't seem to stop the other. He simply pushed robe and t-shirt out of the way and buried his face in Sherlock's chest, inhaling deeply.

"I don't--I can't--"

"Hush." John tugged the robe off Sherlock's shoulders, and he pulled his t-shirt off without being told to. John kissed his way from Sherlock's pecs up to his throat, with little piglike snuffling noises that made him want to laugh and cry at the same time--porcine, inelegant, and irresistibly arousing, despite the blandness of their mingling scents to his medicated brain.

John's hands came to rest again on Sherlock's face, cupping it like a precious goblet. His eyes, looking straight into Sherlock's face without compromise, made Sherlock want to roll over and thrust his arse in the air, submitting once and for all.

"Do you want my cock, Sherlock?"

Sherlock managed to nod.

"You'll have it."

John sank to his knees, hands dragging down Sherlock's bare torso, and began untying the drawstring at his waist. My God, was John actually going to--? He was. He peeled down the thin pants and nuzzled Sherlock's belly, licked at his navel, then licked his way down onto Sherlock's cock.

It had always been something of an embarrassment to Sherlock that the drugs actually made his cock bigger, more beta-looking. John had a typical alpha cock for a man of his size, not long but thick, the foreskin only covering the knot. Sherlock's prick was long and slender, thrusting aggressively out of his prepuce instead of remaining demurely sheathed. John sucked deeply on the head, his broad hands stroking up and down Sherlock's thighs.

Sherlock's thighs quivered, his spine loosened, and he fell backward onto the bed, arms spread out. No alpha had ever sucked his cock. Alphas didn't suck cock, everyone knew that. Even the male therapists had been unwilling to do so, even though when he wanked he only touched himself there, he didn't try to fist his arse like the omegas in porn. John was sucking his cock, John was still sucking his cock when he lifted Sherlock's heels onto the bed and stroked two fingers over Sherlock's hole, curiously, politely.

Sherlock whimpered. John pulled back, leaving a kiss on the shaft. "Do you want lube? Do you have any?"

Sherlock whimpered again and bit his lip, hard, regaining enough control to speak. "Drawer on the left, your left." John climbed over him to look, dragging hot hard solid strong alpha across him, he could smell it now even if it wasn't an airborne intoxicant for him, it was delicious and John, delicious alpha John, and now two fingers were slipping into his vent, cool with lube, pressing and coaxing out more of his own moisture.

"Oh, that's lovely, that's good." John kissed around his thighs and his sac, his belly and his prick, his fingers working in and out. "You're so soft, so slick, getting wetter for me, Sherlock, you can take my cock, you're going to take it, I know you will."

He would never produce the floods of lubricant that generations of alphas had fetishized, not unless he went off the drugs. But he did lubricate, if aroused, and his internal muscles relaxed. John's fingers were almost unbearably clever, priming him with the artificial lubricant, and his words were cleverer still, stroking the sexual center of the brain. Encouragement, praise, wonder, lubricity, all mingled together, "That's right, love, so soft, so greedy for it, that's good, what a lovely hard cock you have, oh Sherlock, you gorgeous omega, how could I not want you, that's it, put your legs over my shoulders, yes, I've got what you need...."

Sherlock felt his eyes roll back in his head as the glans of John's cock entered him. His whole body lifted itself, a roll from the seventh cervical vertebra unimpeded to the sacrum, and the entirety of John's cock sank in, the entirety of John sinking in, opening him, possessing him. He remembered being utterly terrified once during sex with a male alpha, not of any possible physical pain but simply of being that close to another human being, of letting someone in. But John had already been inside him; John had entered parts of Sherlock's life, his experience, his mind, that no one else had even approached. It was absolutely right that his body would enter Sherlock's body to complete that intimacy.

And it was glorious, unimaginably glorious, that his prick would stretch Sherlock's vent, would make him sob, would make him twist up in search of more and cry out, oh, oh, oh, and then the press of John's knot against him would make his voice break, John, force it down into its lowest register and deprive him, for an unfathomable instant, of words.

Then John drew back, thrust in again, and started the whole cycle over.

John fucked Sherlock, and Sherlock was fucked, and Sherlock bucked hard against John's thrusts, and John braced himself on his arms and swore, until Sherlock was whipping his head from side to side on the pillow and John had to seize him by the jaw with hard relentless fingers and shout his name. "Sherlock! I need--to know--how--?"

###

If he hadn't been so aroused--fuck, more aroused than he'd ever been with anyone--John would have laughed at the expression on Sherlock's face. Stupefied. That was a good word for it. Fucked deep and stupefied. He had just enough brain power to wonder if anyone else had ever seen that face, the eyes so pale they were transparent, narrow rings the color of rain around big black pupils, and the mouth slack and deeply flushed, soft and totally unable to produce multisyllable sarcasms.

Well, Sherlock couldn't answer the question, and John could barely even get it out, so enough talking. John pulled out, making his partner *whimper*, my god, grappled Sherlock onto his side, and snugged up behind him so he could thrust in again and stay there and *knot*.

Oh, Christ, he hadn't knotted anyone in a long while. And it felt good, so good that the only thing he could do as he sank in was bury his face between Sherlock's shoulderblades and rub his lips on silky sweaty skin, smelling and tasting, finally, the distinctive tang of aroused omega, of omega Sherlock.

Sherlock whimpered and struggled as the knot swelled inside him. John wound one arm and one leg firmly around him and kissed the two sharp scapulas and the perfect vertebrae. "I've got you, sh, I've got you, Sherlock." He wormed his other arm under Sherlock and then got his left hand on Sherlock's prick, which was still delightfully hard. "That's my knot inside you, feel that? that's my knot in your lovely arse, my god, you have the most beautiful bum I've ever seen, and my prick is going to fill you up with my come, oh yes, god yes--"

Sherlock's prick twitched and spurted in John's hand, and all those lovely omega muscles bore down on his prick and his knot and he started coming, too, in slow steady pulses. Sherlock moaned at the feel of it, and John rubbed his chest and stroked his prick and kissed him and things went on like that for quite a while, a proper full-duration alpha/omega orgasm for both of them.

###

Much, much later, it was dim in Sherlock's bedroom and John was wiping him with a warm wet flannel. Wiping his groin and between his buttocks. Sherlock realized first, that he was awake, second, that he had been asleep, or possibly even unconscious, and third, that John Watson had knotted him and it had been the best sex of his life.

He opened his eyes a fraction to see John watching him, the hint of a grin tucked into the corners of his mouth. "Think you can walk?" John said.

Sherlock let his eyes drop closed again, his mouth drop open in a yawn. "I'll have to run some tests."

"You do that." Comfortably naked, John wandered off carrying a basin of water and a wet flannel, returned after a brief interval wrapped in his bathrobe to sit on the edge of the bed and favor Sherlock with a more serious look.

"Sherlock, I--" John looked away and shook his head, then looked back at Sherlock. "Fuck, I don't know what to say."

Sherlock allowed himself to reach out a hand and lay it on John's warm bare knee. "I'm your omega, John. If you want me."

"If--!" Again stymied for words, John leaned in and kissed Sherlock, hard, almost smothering him. Sherlock had no complaints.

"You're my omega, Sherlock, damn right you are. And I'm your alpha, and I have been since the day I moved in. It doesn't matter if we don't have children, it wouldn't matter if we never had sex again, though we'd bloody well better, I'm your alpha. You're my omega. And that's that."

Having said this, John walked round to the other side of the bed, shed his bathrobe, and got under the covers. "Budge up." He pulled the sheets up over both of them.

In the darkness, his face pressed into John Watson's shoulder, Sherlock smiled. That was that.


End file.
